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FIDELIA

shone in; and next was a bedroom, for Fidelia and David had a suite at the hotel now.

Fidelia had just finished doing her diary. In her locked trunk, which was in the hotel store-room, were fifteen red volumes, three new ones added to the twelve she had brought with her to Mrs. Fansler's, and the red bound book which lay open before Fidelia, with its pages for this morning filled, carried the record of Fidelia Herrick past the third anniversary of her marriage to David and up to this morning in the second month of their fourth year.

It was a record which might have dismayed Fidelia if she ever totalled the sum of her doings and reckoned the result of her days; but she never thought of anything like that. She often referred back to old volumes but only to reread certain pages or passages which she wished more vividly to recall. Yet the record emphasized her consciousness of certain tendencies such as the greater and greater infrequency of David's and her visits to Itanaca. As a consequence of the cessation of their visits, father Herrick was taking every opportunity to come to Chicago; he had arrived in the city on church business yesterday and looked in upon David at his office. This morning father Herrick was coming to call upon Fidelia.

"He's simply going to make himself feel more terribly about me," Fidelia said. "That's what he always does."

She did not like to be a subject of distress to him but she had just about abandoned the making of efforts to please him. What was the use when he was sure to see wrong in the most innocent things you did?